Wednesday's Child
by Quaxo
Summary: What were the beginnings of the troubled man Severus Snape?


Disclaimer: I do not own any recognizable characters. Those belong to J.K. Rowling and whoever else has got licensing on them. I have no money.  
  
Warning: This story **is** canon, so far, and though it will not contain any major spoilers (although that's probably been ruined already for most people just by looking at FFN).  
  
Wednesday's Child, By Quaxo  
  
Born eight weeks early, and weighing only two pounds eight ounces, the unnamed son of Jocelyn Ann and Leviticus Snape was not expected to live long. Still, St. Mungo's had brought in Healer Darius Moon, a muggleborn expert in premature birth, who was experimenting in combing muggle and magical technology. Subjects rarely came up for Healer Moon to experiment with, and even though he and the hospital knew that the Snapes, a once highly respected pureblood family, could not afford to pay for all the expensive treatments, they weren't willing to give up on the chance for further experimentation.  
  
The child lay in a small crib, incased in a variant of the Bubble Head charm, which protected the weak infant's body from bacteria. He ate and breathed through various tubes attached to enchanted muggle machines. Warming spells were cast every hour.  
  
Jocelyn visited her son frequently, gazing at his red skin, his skin's pigment not thick enough to hide the color of the blood pulsing through his veins. He had tiny, stick-like arms and legs. His eyes seemed to bulge through his veiny eyelids.  
  
She wondered what color his eyes would be. in a month of daily visits lasting up to eight hours he had yet to open them. Would they be hazel like her own, or chocolate brown like Leviticus'? Perhaps blue like her parents?  
  
"This your little mite, dearie?" said an elderly woman, gesturing to her son's crib.  
  
"Yes," she sighed, brushing the top of the Bubble Head charm with her fingers. She'd yet to touch her son.  
  
"He's a strong little one, yes he is, he'll make it out of here." The woman put a trembling hand on her shoulder.  
  
"I hope so."  
  
"There you are Mrs. Carver!" panted an apprentice healer as she dashed into the room. "I'm sorry if she disturbed you missus, I'll just return her to the ward."  
  
Jocelyn smiled weakly at the back of the infirm Mrs. Carver, before returning to her vigil over her child.  
  
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She had met Leviticus at a party held by Maureen McKinley's parents, in honor of her wedding to Maurice McKinnon. At twenty-five he was one of the pureblood segment's most eligible bachelor's, aside from the recently graduated Jules Malfoy. Witch Weekly's gossip column made him out to be something of a rebel, living in an apartment in muggle London, instead of one of his family's numerous estates, and attending all sorts of wild parties frowned upon by the upper echelon of pureblood society. There were even rumors that he invited muggle 'Beatniks' to his home, and they stayed until all hours of the night.  
  
She had been one of the bride's maids, dressed in ugly rose taffeta robes. She would have been Maureen's maid of honor, but Maureen's parents, while not outright purists like the Malfoys and the Blacks, weren't willing to create a stir in allowing a muggleborn to be Maureen's maid of honor.  
  
Then, much to her surprise, Leviticus Snape came to her and asked her for a dance. That one dance turned to many, and as they spun about the room he sneered openly at the gawking faces.  
  
She imagined that was when she'd fallen for him, being so openly defiant of all that he'd known.  
  
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January twenty-sixth, two months and one week after Baby Boy Snape was brought into the world, he was allowed to leave St. Mungo's bundled tightly in his mother's arms. She'd been coached on how to bottle-feed him earlier in, though he hadn't taken to it well.  
  
She stumbled as she stepped out of the fireplace in her and her husband's miniscule flat, and was disappointed to see that Leviticus was not there waiting.  
  
"He must have gotten a call from work, dearest." She told her son. "Your father's a very important man. Junior Assistant at the Ministry of International Wizarding Affairs is not a position to be sneezed at."  
  
The boy scrunched his nose let out a loud wail, his face reddening as tears started to leak from his eyelashes in fat wet drops.  
  
"Oh dear, you can't be hungry. let's check your nappy." Jocelyn said in a voice she hoped was soothing.  
  
She cleared herself a space on the miniscule dining room table and removed the elaborate binding job the nurses had done with the woolen blanket. Sure enough the cloth was soaked through.  
  
Jocelyn looked frantically for where she had placed a stack of clean cloth nappies and washrags. She wished her wand were still working, as she rushed across the room, eyes never quite leaving her son incase he should fall from the table.  
  
The crying had not stopped, as she'd hoped it would, once she'd changed the filthy nappy. When Leviticus came home an hour later, she was in near tears herself as the child, exhausted from all his screaming, began to doze off, occasionally whimpering but no longer howling at the top of his lungs.  
  
"He made it after all." Were the first words out of Leviticus' mouth as he walked in the door.  
  
Jocelyn smiled weakly, jostling her son gently, which seemed to further quiet his complaints.  
  
"Would you like to see your son, Leviticus?"  
  
"I suppose I had better, hadn't I?" He said indifferently, as he held out his arms. She delicately placed him in his hands, and fought down a cringe as he held their son by his armpits, a thing the nurses had told her implicitly not to do, as her son could pull his arm out of it's socket.  
  
"Well, he's mine at least." Leviticus sighed.  
  
"Yes, he's got your eyes, hair, and nose. it's like he's a transfigured copy." Jocelyn added.  
  
Their son was apparently displeased by the way he was being handled, and let out a loud scream, followed by a series of hiccoughs.  
  
Leviticus pressed their son back into her arms with a sneer of disgust.  
  
"Quiet the brat." He said, moving toward the living room, snatching a copy of Quidditch Quarterly off the coffee table as he sat on the couch. "And when's dinner?"  
  
Jocelyn cursed mentally that she'd forgotten, in all the excitement of bringing her son home today, that she'd neglected to prepare dinner.  
  
The child quieted faster, probably already exhausted by his previous crying jag, and she soon was able to place him into his crib.  
  
She quickly pulled out a container of Salisbury steaks that she'd prepared a few nights previous, and placed them in the oven to reheat, along with a few greased potatoes.  
  
"What shall we name him?"  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Our son, Leviticus. He can't go about as 'Baby Boy Snape' forever." She said hesitantly.  
  
Leviticus turned the page of his magazine sharply, before replying:  
  
"Call him Severus, after my father. That ought to have the old bastard spinning in his grave." Leviticus spat. "Is dinner ready yet?" She could hear his impatience at her slowness reaching dangerous levels.  
  
"Almost." She said as she fetched out a bottle of wine from their muggle refrigerator and popped the cork.  
  
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A week later she'd finally figured out Severus' schedule for the most part, and learned how to juggle him with the household chores. Now, she was heading out to Diagon Alley and to Ollivander's shop to discover what exactly was wrong with her wand.  
  
Living in a muggle flat, filled with muggle equipment made it easy for her to neglect her wand. Now that Severus was home, however, wand work would certainly become a timesaver.  
  
She was able, to her surprise, to open the entrance to Diagon Alley. Passing through the entrance quickly so as not to jinx her luck, she made her way through the throng of midday shoppers towards Ollivander's.  
  
The place was exactly like it had been eighteen years ago, when she'd come for her wand at age eleven. The dusty shelves full of boxes of various lengths, and bits of smashed pottery littering the floor.  
  
"Jocelyn Ann Moore. although it's Snape now. I hope you haven't broken your wand, holly and griffin talon if I remember correctly."  
  
Jocelyn started, Ollivander seemed to apparate from behind the stacks in front of her.  
  
"Yes, that's right. I haven't snapped it. but it doesn't seem to be working." Jocelyn said hopelessly as she handed her wand across the counter.  
  
Ollivander snatched it from her grasp, and began examining it closely with magnifying spectacles. He muttered to himself as he checked the wood for any cracks in the tip or handle.  
  
He then stared hard with his opalescent eyes at Severus, who for once did not start crying the moment someone looked at him.  
  
"The troubles with your wand did not start recently, did they Mrs. Snape?" Ollivander said with a faintly saddened tone.  
  
"No." she tried think back to when her wand had first started to fritz out on her.  
  
"I imagine it was about the time your little one came into this world." He said with a small gesture towards her son. "Sometimes, when a labor is particularly troublesome, or when a child is sickly after birth, the mother's magic will sometimes compensate for physical deficiencies." He handed back her wand. "You can still do low-level magics, such as opening the entrance to Diagon Alley." She nodded, although it didn't seem that he needed her conformation. "Give it time."  
  
"Thank you, Mr. Ollivander." She said, departing his shop quickly.  
  
Well, Ollivader's explanation certainly clarified things, and it was certainly cheaper than trying to make another expensive appointment with a specialist at St. Mungo's. Leviticus would be happy that she'd saved them some money.  
  
Apparently the noise of the noon hour rush was too much for Severus, who started crying. Doing her best to hush him as she worked through the crowd back to the apartment.  
  
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"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Severus, happy birthday to you." His mother sang as she placed the small homemade frosted cake before him, with five candles twinkling proudly on top.  
  
Severus drew in as much air as he possibly could, held for a second to let it build pressure, before blowing out his candles. His mother clapped when he got them all out in one go. She set aside the cake and placed a completely square box before him, wrapped in colorful sections of the Daily Prophet's comic section.  
  
He tore into it gleefully, opening the cardboard box to reveal a snow globe.  
  
It was not just any snow globe, however, with fake snow and filled with water. Inside his snow globe a small quidditch player zoomed about in green robes, pulling spectacular dives and turns in pursuit of a miniscule golden snitch.  
  
"It's wizard!" he exclaimed watching as the seeker grabbed the snitch out of the air.  
  
"Yes, and I've got another gift for you." She smiled at him, and he looked about eagerly.  
  
"Where?"  
  
"You can't see it yet. not for a few more months at least. But soon you're going to have a baby brother or sister." His mother's smiled widened, and he felt himself smiling with her.  
  
He chattered excitedly about his new sibling, and all the things he'd do with him (He just knew he was going to have a brother). He'd teach him Quidditch and chess, and how best to avoid father when he was angry.  
  
The front door slammed open and shut, and a quick glance at the clock told him that it was only four o'clock. and his father was never home before six most days.  
  
"What's going on here?" His father sneered. "Having a tea party?"  
  
"It's Severus' birthday, Leviticus." His mother said, standing to take his cloak. "I told you before you--" She was cut off when his father slapped her.  
  
"Don't lie to me, you little cunt." His father hissed. "You're the reason I got fired today." He threw his mother up against the wall and began throwing punches.  
  
"Stop it! You'll kill it! You'll kill the baby!" he shrieked. He then kicked his father from behind the kneecap, causing his father to stumble slightly.  
  
He froze in shock as he realized what he had done, and stared, terrified, at his father who was now looming over him. His father grabbed him by the back of his shirt, and then hauled him towards his parent's bedroom. He was thrown on the bed so hard that he bounced and smacked against the headboard.  
  
His mother started screaming again, and he plugged his ears with his fingers in a vain attempt to block out the sound. He cried to himself, knowing that as soon as his father was finished with his mother, that it would be his turn.  
  
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He woke up late the next morning to the feel of his mother's fingers running softly through his hair. He didn't remember much of what happened after his father had returned to the bedroom, it seemed as if he'd just left the room.  
  
"Do you want to take a bath?" She asked him softly, and he nodded, his throat too sore to want to speak.  
  
She gathered him up and carried him into the bathroom, placing him in a tub full of warm water.  
  
She began to scrub the dried blood gently away from his freshly scabbing wounds. Normally he would have insisted that he could do it himself, he wasn't a baby anymore, but he didn't feel like it.  
  
After tenderly going over all his bruises and cuts she started to shampoo his hair. While turned to snatch the bottle off the sink, he noticed the blood on the seat of her robes.  
  
"You lost the baby, didn't you?" he asked quietly.  
  
His mother said nothing as she began to gently scrub his hair. 


End file.
